On the on-going subject of maids, if I do get a new maid, the following will be what I will do differently (regretted not laying stricter ground rules):
1) Get an older maid who's not so attractive *haha*. My current one's 35, tawt that's old enuff, won't fool ard. But well, tho she's married with 2 daughters (13 yrs and 15 yrs old, & hubby working in Msia if she's to be believed), she still has a bf here. Maybe cos' her features still quite presentable, big eyes, small, oval face. Sometimes when we go out, I see the foreign workers looking at her.
2) If there's insistence on off-days, then that particular day of the monoth should be set by us, and not determined by her (now she suka suka take off)
3) Tell her no handphones are allowed. My maid started to change after she lay her hands on a HP (she sneaked out of the house once or twice when my dad forgot to lock the door, met a fren/sister to get the HP, and when we found out, came up with a string of lies so preposterous that they can only be found in a movie script). If she somehow comes into possession of one, insist that she surrenders it to you in the day, for you to return it to her at night during the weekends. My maid used to SMS every single minute, discreetly from her pocket (she tawt we couldnt see) and sometimes answers calls even when she's cooking!
4) Tell her, 'no kissing or cuddling the kids close to her face'. My current one has been doing that which disgusts me sometimes, cos' I can imagine that when I kiss my kiddos, some of her saliva are deposited on my lips!!! *eeks* And it doesn't help that she falls sick one every week or fortnight.
5) Make her drink 6 glasses of water a day. Dunno why, but my maid, as well as frens' Indo maids don't like the taste of our water, said it's got chemicals. Thus, they don't drink much water, which results in my maid being down with a sore throat almost every other week.
6) Insist that she wears a face-mask whnever she's sick. My maid tells me that she cant breathe with that, so prefers not wearing it. DUH! Even my hubby and I wear the masks when we are not well, for fear of passing germs to the kids.
Will come up with more when I've more time to think about it. Lest you girls think I hate my maid, I actually don't, lah. Like I've said, she's a fast worker who loves my kids and juggles 2 pretty well. What we don't like about her is her lies (which have since snowballed from 1 white lie to cover her tracks to one gigantic avalanche), her keeping of a bf (found out that she went to a hotel with him last week through an undeleted SMS) and her love for chatting on the phone (tho' I do understand her need for communications, just like our chats on forum, MSN, etc). And oh, how could I forget, her close bond with my DS, which gets me stark raving mad! *Grrrr....*
)))
